Sign the petition

Sign and share our petition to demand material steps towards a cop-free union by 2022 AFSCME Convention!

Full text of petition:

To: President Lee Saunders and the AFSCME International Executive Board
From: Cop Free AFSCME

We call on the AFSCME International Executive Board and the President to follow the courageous example set by AFSCME’s own history and take concrete steps to support the following actions by the start of the 2022 convention:

  1. AFSCME and the AFL-CIO: end our affiliation with Police Unions and direct our sizable political power towards the goal of defunding the police and re-allocating to life-affirming public services that work to keep ALL communities safe.
  2. Endorse and advocate for the passing of the BREATHE Act.
  3. Provide material support to the Movement for Black Lives and local Black-led organizations.
  4. Advocate for an end to qualified immunity for police, a full ban on cash bail, end no-knock warrants, remove police in schools, decriminalize sex work, and support re-enfranchisement of currently and formerly incarcerated people.
  5. Make a true commitment to racial justice by creating an MLK memorial fund for Black workers within AFSCME, working to increase representation of Black union leadership proportionate to Black membership, no longer commemorating National Police Week, and adding racial justice to our stated “priority issues.”
  6. All locals who represent corrections, probation, and parole officers and workers, urge staff and leadership within these unions to commit to contracts without qualified immunity that do not evade accountability and prohibit negotiations over anything involving use of force, work to eradicate racism within their ranks, serve and protect all people equally, and not receive assistance from AFSCME when disciplined for sexual misconduct, excessive use of force, or violence.
  7. Divest from campaigns organizing law enforcement officers, jail and prison guards, probation officers, and armed security officers. Instead invest in union organizing campaigns to protect and empower sectors where workers are committed to racial equality, and developing non-law enforcement public service locals, wherein workers and peer-led networks find and build non-carceral solutions to social harms that keep communities together and center self-determination.
  8. Commit to cop-free candidates: candidates who run on explicit platforms of defunding the police and reinvesting in non-carceral sectors and community-led projects and whose campaign funding guidelines reject donations from law enforcement entities. Refuse to support any political candidate who accepts donations from law enforcement officers, jail and prison guards, probation officers, and armed security officers locals or who intends to act against defunding the police or the platform of the Movement for Black Lives while in office.